Dear Friends:
We hope you will join us on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, at 7:00 p.m. for the long-awaited launch of the latest edition of In Medias Res, a journal of creative written and visual work by Odyssey Project students and alumni. The launch will take place LIVE on YouTube.
Contributors to the journal will read from their published work alongside celebrated Chicago author, Sahar Mustafah, whose recent novel The Beauty of Your Face (Norton, 2020) was listed as one of the New York Times’ Most Notable Books of 2020.
Most importantly, we are thrilled (and proud!) to be able to showcase in this public, joyful forum our talented Odyssey Project students, who are both established and emerging Chicago-based writers and artists.
milo bosh | Sitting Room
The organizing theme of this issue of In Medias Res is “Place” and asks us to consider the ways in which the ongoing pandemic has challenged us to consider our relationships to geography, location, distance, home, work, and identity. Our student contributors have the insight, imagination, and frankness we all need so desperately to hear in our present moment. We hope you will make the time in your busy schedules to honor these significant and dynamic voices.
Once again, you can register for the event at this link. We look forward to seeing you there!
Before we say farewell, we also want to tell you about a series of fantastic virtual community reading groups and public workshops that we are calling Rememory: haunting, trauma, and historical fiction. The series, kindly funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Arts Midwest, begins in November with a community-wide reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. You are invited to learn more about the series, join any of the reading groups, and register for workshops and events at this link. (Sneak preview: together, we will be reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred at the start of 2022 and Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World in spring 2022.) So you have plenty of opportunities to read and/or join in the discussion.
My very best,
Rebecca Amato, Director of Teaching and Learning
P.S. You can download the 2021 edition of In Medias Res and view its Digital Companion Guide here.
ACTIVATING THE HUMANITIES
Illinois Humanities, the Illinois affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a statewide nonprofit organization that activates the humanities through free public programs, grants, and educational opportunities that foster reflection, spark conversation, build community, and strengthen civic engagement. We provide free, high-quality humanities experiences throughout Illinois, particularly for communities of color, individuals living on low incomes, counties and towns in rural areas, small arts and cultural organizations, and communities highly impacted by mass incarceration.
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